Thanks to improvements in technology and widespread consumer interest, once-exotic forms of communication have become commonplace, and today the average consumer has access to a broad array of communications services. The Internet and wireless telephony, once the preserve of an elite few, now routinely supplement traditional telephone services and are frequently supplied by the same carriers. Even inexpensive home computers now include facsimile capability. Businesses employing mobile employees can furnish them with economical pagers that incorporate advanced features, such as text transmission and Internet access.
The sheer proliferation of communication options, while greatly improving access and convenience, has engendered problems as well. The existence of a communication channel does not ensure that the recipient of a message will be “listening” to that particular channel at a given time, yet the sender of a message has no way to know this. Indeed, more channels of communication traffic mean more demands on the attentions of potential recipients, who, feeling besieged by the assault of e-mail, voice mail, pages, etc., may simply inactivate some communication devices at different times. Message senders, therefore, are faced with the choice of risking non-delivery of their messages, or painstakingly re-transmitting a message on every possible mode of communication modality.
It may also be difficult to transmit the same message to multiple recipients. While a single e-mail message, sent once, can reach an unlimited number of destinations, phone messages must be repeated for each call. Moreover, different recipients may have access to different types of communication channels; perhaps some recipients can be reached efficiently only by e-mail, others by fax, and still others by page.
The integration of communication input devices also raises the prospect of messages having multiple forms of content. Today, a single message may include input from a variety of sources (e.g., voice and text); transmitting such a message by traditional means may be quite cumbersome, involving multiple separate transmissions that must be coordinated or difficult “packaging” of the different inputs into a single message.
U.S. Ser. No. 09/496,170, filed on Feb. 1, 2000 and entitled Multi-Mode Message Routing and Management (the entire disclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference) addresses these difficulties and discloses, inter alia, a facility for transmission of messages composed on one or more input devices to a single or multiple recipients by means of one or plural communication modalities. Such communication modalities may include, for example, conventional or wireless telephone, facsimile transmission, pager, e-mail, postal mail or courier. Thus, a message may be directed to a single recipient via multiple modalities, such as e-mail and fax, in order to ensure the earliest possible receipt of the message; or may be directed to multiple recipients by a single modality or by different modalities (e.g., some recipients receive the message by e-mail, others by fax, others by phone). The facility may be configured to respond to defined “escalation” rules that specify conditions under which different delivery modalities may be sequentially employed. For example, the rules may specify that if there is no response to an e-mailed question within an hour, the recipient is to be telephoned. Moreover, in addition to alternative transmission modalities, the escalation rules may specify alternative recipients (as well as alternative modalities for those recipients). The escalation rules may also specify default contact methods, which may apply to specific individuals or to lists of recipients.
The invention disclosed in the '170 application may include functionality for determining whether a message has been received (e.g., telephone and e-mail polling), as well as automatic sender notification upon confirmation of receipt. Moreover, in addition to monitoring messages in order to confirm their receipt, the invention may facilitate recipients' responses. In this way, the invention can orchestrate multi-question surveys utilizing multiple communication modes; for example, individuals contacted directly can respond immediately, while others can respond later in accordance with instructions delivered to them—e.g., via a web site or by calling a toll-free number.
The invention disclosed in the '170 application supports messages having embedded questions that call for response by the recipient. Such responses, when received, may be communicated to the message sender and/or accumulated.
Also facilitated by the invention disclosed in the '170 is scheduling of message delivery, on a mode-by-mode basis where appropriate. Scheduling may include delivery at a particular time or within a designated time window, or may involve preventing delivery during specified “black-out” periods. In some embodiments, scheduling may be automatic and based on considerations such as the recipient's time zone and the form of communication (e.g., to avoid awakening the recipient by telephone).
However, the '170 application contemplates a system in which customers' client computers communicate via the World Wide Web (the “web”) with a server implementing the foregoing functions. In other words, the interaction is essentially manual and stepwise in nature, with customers selecting options and indicating preferences in an interactive session. This model is generally unsuited to business applications requiring more automated, high-volume access to messaging functions.